In less than 10 days, a federal judge will receive a recommendation about how to move forward with plans for the Orleans jail. The options vary from building an additional 700-bed facility to doing nothing.

A group of community members Monday (Nov. 21) overwhelmingly voiced concern that adding more beds, even if they're tailored to meet the needs of mentally ill inmates, would promote more incarceration when the levels are already too high.

They spoke at a town hall forum hosted by Orleans Parish Prison Reform Coalition and attended by a handful of city leaders and the jail's compliance director Gary Maynard, who is tasked with making a recommendation to the judge. In addition to talk of the jail's mental health population, Maynard hinted at Monday's town hall he would recommend youthful offenders are no longer housed at the adult jail. The topic of youthful offenders has long been debated, but came under a harsh spotlight after 15-year-old inmate Jaquin Thomas died by suicide Oct. 17 while in custody of the Orleans Justice Center.

Sabrina Carter, one of many speakers at the town hall who shared personal stories about how incarceration has touched his or her family, said her 48-year-old brother has been a drug addict since he was 17 and has been in and out of jail for decades.

"All these years, he's still on drugs," she said. The jail hasn't offered him or her family any help, and she doubted a mental health wing would, either. "I go in the crack house looking for him and tell him, 'Look, buddy, you need to come home,'" Carter said. "No person at the (jail) facility is doing that."

Rehab is too expensive, she said. She would rather see money for new mental health facility at the jail spent on services her brother can use on the outside, she said.

A woman who used a Spanish-to-English interpreter to address a panel described the conditions of her 45-day stay at the jail in 2011. She said she had a 11-day-old son at home but could not get in touch with her family because "they lost me in the system."

The woman said was never given undergarments, was given shampoo only one day and was so hot at night she could not sleep.

"My question is why are you thinking of expanding the jail if you can't make sure conditions in the current one are up to standard?" said the woman, through an interpreter, and to applause.

Councilwoman Susan Guidry, one of two council members who attended the town hall, said she worries that if a stand-alone facility is built to house inmates with mental health needs, the jail will become a go-to place for people with mental health problems when services outside the criminal justice realm are better suited to help them.

"Mental health practitioners are going to feel more comfortable putting the mentally ill in there," Guidry said she feared.

Councilman Jason Williams said he doesn't want jail's proposed mental health facility to become the "catchall" solution to the city's mental health crisis, like it is now.

However, a federal consent decree demands that the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office provide services to inmates with mental health needs. Court-appointed jail monitors who are experts in the field of the corrections field say those services are not currently being provided at Orleans Justice Center at an acceptable level, even after a new $45 million jail was built last year.

Guidry said Sheriff Marlin Gusman was supposed to but failed to build a jail that can house all kinds of populations, including the mentally ill.

Maynard, who was hired to run the jail until it becomes compliant with the consent decree, must give his recommendation to U.S. District Judge Africk by Dec. 1.

He listed his four options:

1) build a 400-700-bed free-standing facility

2) build a 119-to-300 bed free-standing facility

3) Renovate the jail's top story, the 4th floor, to properly house and serve inmates with mental health needs

4) Do nothing

Maynard said he has explored all of the options and received input from people with various points of view. He did not hint which option he would chose, though he made it clear "do nothing" was not a viable choice. He also remarked he would not want to burden the city with the long-term operational cost of staffing an additional 700-bed city.

Maynard: No youth in adult jail

In addition to recommending how to house and care for inmate with mental health needs, Maynard must tell Africk by Dec. 1 how to house and care for youthful offenders. Though Maynard kept his recommendations on special populations close to the vest, a possible indicator that he has not come to a final decision, he suggested he has made up his mind about the housing of minors.

"There's no question about youth--they don't need to be in that adult jail," Maynard said.

He added, though, that if all youth are housed at the Youth Studies Center, the city's juvenile detention facility, they must have the capacity and layout to take all youthful inmates, including the most violent of them.